But how, exactly, do you bridge the gap between concept and fruition? Broadly, it takes navigating through six key steps — articulating your vision (gaining clarity and understanding), building your team, gathering insights, synthesizing your findings, conducting an impact assessment, completing action planning, and refining as you go. Let’s unpack the first two of those two steps here.
Gaining Clarity: Understanding What Inspired Leadership’s Positions
This stage is all about gathering the unique perspectives of your executive leaders and understanding why they set certain objectives or made public declarations for your company. Understanding those perspectives can help you prioritize ideas and illuminate sources of resistance in advance. Knowing those areas puts you in a better position to do any extra political or logistical work that might be necessary to garner sponsorships.
Interviews of 30 to 45 minutes are an ideal way to get the clarity and understanding you need from your leadership. Prepare for this by creating a concise set of interview questions. You can adapt what you ask based on your circumstances, but your prompt should include inquiries such as:
What is the motivation or impetus behind this objective?Why is the objective significant to you or the business?How do you see the objective taking form in the future?What specific, immediate deliverables do you expect around this goal?Are there specific risks or concerns to watch out for?
Next, try to identify the themes you see emerging through the interviews. Your Corporate Social Responsibility leaders might consistently talk about needing to satisfy a new compliance or regulatory mandate, or perhaps executives or shareholders keep telling you that they don’t want to lose market share to competitors who have already implemented similar objectives. It’s perfectly acceptable if there’s a strong outlier opinion in the mix — don’t ignore it. But the main goal is to get a sense of what most of your leaders are thinking and feeling so you can then translate that for everyone in the business.
Recruiting the Best Team Members
After you’ve completed your interviews and know what’s driving the objective, you’ll need to assemble a team who can work on the initiative. Start by identifying the roles and people who should be present on the team. You’ll typically require someone who can handle facilitation and collaboration, as well as someone skilled in administration (e.g., notetaking, organizing meetings).
Roles can also center around specific areas of expertise or technical competence that match the objective, such as HR, sustainability or manufacturing. Let’s say a critical stakeholder explains that they need to bring electric vehicles into your fleet. In that circumstance, you might need someone with expertise in fleet management and supply chain management to be involved. The more someone’s expertise influences other roles or tasks that are connected to the objective, the more important it is to lean on them and ensure they’re a mandatory participant on the team.
Multiple variables might influence the roles you assign and who plays them. A more complex objective might need more people to achieve than a simple goal. It’s also not uncommon to run into a situation where your top choice for a role doesn’t have the bandwidth to take on anything else or work within your given deadline. But that person can often point you toward other trustworthy, competent people you can feel good about handing the responsibility to.
Lastly, consider the chemistry among the people you’re considering for the team. Successful teams don’t just know what to do and how. They genuinely support each other and create a synergy that improves the final result. To assess how well people might work together, ask questions such as
Do the individuals have strong bonds and working relationships?Are they known for being change agents or leaders in the organization?Are they willing to step up without resistance or conflict when needed?
Inviting People to the Team With a Formal Ask
Many leaders simply tell people to participate on teams or instruct them to come to project meetings. This approach can leave individuals confused about the value they might bring, and it runs the risk of onboarding people who, in the end, aren’t going to work passionately toward the goal. It can also be overwhelming if the initiative means the worker must assume responsibilities that are above and beyond their day-to-day roles. A formal ask is more respectful and collaborative, clarifies what the worker will bring to the table and offers a chance to verify both why the objective is important and what level of commitment the prospective teammate will bring to the project.
To conduct a formal ask, schedule a 10-minute meeting with a prospective team member. Define your expectations around their participation and output, such as when you might need their voice to weigh in on project progress, whether they’ll need to present or how they might ease resistance later on. Directly askif they are willing and able to perform the duties you are expecting of their role. An employee may politely decline, and for a legitimate reason. If that happens, ask the candidate who they think would be best to fill the role.
A Strong Foundation Sets the Stage for Continued Movement
Gaining clarity and understanding of the leadership positions around the proposed goal and building a solid team means you’ll be collaborating with people in lockstep toward a shared vision. That well-defined path and unity help others in your company buy into the initiative and avoid distraction. In the next article in this series, you’ll learn how to utilize that buy-in and focus when we review steps three and four of the implementation process.
